bastien asked me to use my imagination.
so i did.
if you're not interested in my imagination,
then kindly skip reading this post. thanks.
there is some good stuff in here, though,
about how the text-format didn't _start_
as "my passion", but _earned_ the honor...
that's right. when i first came to p.g.,
i thought the plain-text thing _sucked_.
thought i'd have to re-work every file!
and then i found gold in the river-bed...
-bowerbird
===================================
bastien said:
> Bowerbird, imagine one minute you are
> the Robinson Crusoe of a new mailing list
> 100% dedicated to your passion:
> ebooks in structured plain text format(s).
hey, if i'm gonna use my imagination for
something dedicated to my _passion_,
it's not gonna be some crummy listserve!
i'll tell you _that_ right off the bat! ;+)
> How would you make people join the mailing list?
i don't think you can "make" people join a listserve.
> How would you "moderate" it?
i wouldn't. i would let kindness prevail.
i would let honesty speak truth to power.
i would entice lurkers out of the corners.
i would reward intelligence with attention.
i would raise the bar up by raising the bar.
comfort the afflicted; afflict the comfortable.
i read once that there are 3 rules for a good listserve.
1. don't offend.
2. don't be offended.
3. rule #2 is more important than rule #1.
> What kind of encouragement would you send to people?
i would award trophies for participation.
(this is my way of saying "that's a stupid question.")
true creativity doesn't require "encouragement".
it has a drive to express itself -- no matter what.
the trick is to couple creativity with _discipline_,
so that the end-product will have _high_quality_.
> What kind of effective project
> would you make people work on?
you cannot "make" volunteers work on a project.
and even if you could, _i_ wouldn't. why would i?
let each decide for themselves. a thousand flowers.
the masses will always be more creative -- by far --
than any one individual could ever "make" them be.
> What kind of tone would you use in your emails
> so that people feel like they want to follow you?
why would i want people to follow me?
(that's my way of saying "i don't want people to follow me.")
i don't want people to follow me.
i would prefer that they follow their own path.
but i realize that they will do what they want anyway
-- which usually means they will follow _someone_,
because most people appear to be sheep, and thus
are incapable of developing their own path, which
makes me feel sorry for them, but i don't have any
kind of ideas about how i could improve their lot --
so i usually just don't _think_ about where _they_ go,
just as long as they don't follow me around, because
it bugs me when people follow me around too closely.
if they can do it without me noticing, fine. otherwise,
i will make sure i shake them at the first opportunity.
because it _bugs_ me to have someone follow me...
and i pretty much have the same rule _about_ bugs.
my rule is that you can be a bug in my house and
it's totally cool. just so long as i cannot _see_ you.
but once i _see_ you, i am _obligated_ to kill you...
i always announce this, out loud, to any bug i see:
"ok, sorry, bug, but you know the rule, that i must
kill you if i see you, thus now that i have seen you,
i have to kill you." and then i get a kleenex and kill
the bug, and flush bug-and-kleenex down the toilet.
this is how i serve full notice to all of the other bugs.
that is the rule. i have no choice. no exceptions.
but if you're a bug in my house and i do not see you,
you're totally cool. you have nothing to worry about.
> Again, you are Robinson and you are alone.
> Robinson had the Bible with him --
> you "only" have the Gutenberg project.
my thoughts on project gutenberg are convoluted.
i loved michael hart. he might have been a rascal,
but deep down, he was my type of iconoclast guy.
and he made e-books work, which -- to my mind --
is the same thing as "inventing" them, so _there_...
not only that, but he built the premiere e-library!
(in its day, anyway.)
further, it was a cooperative, community e-library,
which is _exactly_ what i think a library should be.
when the top-down people were telling us that
it would be "too expensive" to digitize all books,
michael answered with a bottom-up reply that
we'll do the books ourselves, _one_at_a_time..._
and _that_ was a revolutionary act, a pure one...
plus -- as if all of that weren't enough already --
michael grokked the most important thing about
digital content, namely that it costs _nothing_ to
reproduce it and _nothing_ to distribute it either.
tell me who said "unlimited distribution" first...
and loudest. no, i'll tell you -- it was _michael_.
now, for a long time, michael was just a talker,
like all of us back then. talking was all we did,
since talking was pretty much all we could do...
so for a long time, as a fellow talker myself,
i dismissed michael as just yet another talker.
even when he started typing in actual books,
i dismissed it, because he had, what?, 100?...
talking about a "library" with just 100 books
is pretty hyperbolic, don't you think, mr. hart?
i have more books than that in my living room.
you _talk_ about digitizing more. but we all do!
all of that changed, though, on a day in 1997.
i can still remember it -- and quite vividly too.
i was in a drugstore aisle, reading magazines
-- since i was too poor to buy or subscribe --
and i picked up a "wired", which had an article
on michael. it was the article i posted recently,
where the writer talked about how michael was
sprinkling sugar on his pizza, to "get energy"
for an upcoming all-nighter to type in a book.
i ask, how can you not love that image? :+)
as proof, i can also tell you that there was an
article in that issue about some school in isreal
where they were buying some computers, and
a few of the teachers were voicing complaints
that the funds would be better spent on books.
the link for me was that, with michael's library,
each computer could become an access-point
to -- quite literally -- _thousands_ of books...
so to anyone who could make that connection,
the question of "how best to spend the money"
would be one that was dead-simple to answer.
it was striking, to me, to see one magazine
with such a stark contrast contained within,
shortsightedness in the teachers versus the
brilliant vision of michael's heady project...
and i said to myself, in that drugstore aisle,
"yeah, ya know, this hart character might be
'merely-a-talker', just like me, but at least
he has gained the ear of _wired_magazine_."
which -- back then -- was a very big deal...
and i decided, then and there, that i would be
a michael supporter, even as i continued to
beat the drum about e-books myself as well.
when i first met him on a listserve, i heaped
sloppy-wet love-kisses all over michael hart,
because i knew we were cyberlibrary brothers.
but it was that day, in that drugstore, with
that "wired", that i become a fan of michael.
and even though he picked on me quite a bit
-- which always perplexed me to no end --
i continued to love him, and do to this day...
one of my best days on this list was when
someone said i was brown-nosing michael.
as if michael was the type of person who
wanted to have his ass kissed, and as if
i am the type of person who will kiss ass.
but it let me know that my love was clear.
to _everyone_ here. that made me happy.
still, that's michael, and i long ago separated
michael hart the man from project gutenberg.
because as time went by, it become clear that
michael was mostly a figurehead. by design!
he wanted it that way! the only thing that he
absolutely insisted on was plain-text format.
and even that wasn't exclusive. yes, it had to
be there. but it didn't have to be the only way.
anyway, it was soon clear that the whitewashers
were the real power. they determined what was
"acceptable" and what wasn't. they set the rules.
and they weren't open to input. not in the least.
they'd heard it from so many directions already
they'd put the "do not disturb" sign on the door.
so i might as well be doing dialog with the wall.
plus then marcello took over as the web-master.
and has effectively set much policy by virtue of
the decisions he has made there. (unilaterally?)
all of that made me not care much about p.g.
i could love michael, but be apathetic to p.g.
besides, those weren't the only reasons, either.
i have a real problem with the fact that p.g. is
a library containing predominately old books.
yes, i love the _concept_ of "the public domain".
but we're talkin' 'bout books born before 1923.
yes, that includes some "classics", yes it does.
lots and lots of classics, to be sure. but still,
"classics" are things that bore kids in school.
i mean, seriously...
the world has changed a lot since 1923. a lot.
heck, 1923 was _before_ "the great depression".
i'm a musician, and even as a kid, i _loved_ a
lot of classical music. i loved to play mozart.
i loved beethoven. and my most favorite of all
was bach. i _loved_ playing bach. over and over.
i wore out a batch of bach sheet-music. really.
and that was _before_ i memorized the works...
(after that, there was no way you could stop me.)
i didn't know any kids who loved classical music
as much as i did... and most certainly not bach!
but guess what? i also loved the beatles. a lot.
and the turtles... the rolling stones... and dc5...
later i came to love r&b, and folk, and even c&w.
prince and springsteen, johnny cash and punk...
motown, all by itself, could fill up my juke-box.
so if you told me i had to give all that up, that
i could only get pre-1923 music from now on,
i'd probably rather kill myself than keep living.
heck, flappers had only begun to appear then!
the world changed a lot in the 20th century.
(how is that for a massive understatement?)
it has even changed quite a bit in the 21st...
but little of the post-1922 change is reflected
in the "library" of project gutenberg. so little.
(there _are_ those nut-grower manuals, but...)
it's more like a _museum_ than a _library_...
a museum from an ancient time, one that has
very little to do with the one we live in now...
so even if i love some of those classic books,
a library which is _missing_ so much content
that is _so_ very important to our reality now
is simply not gonna be too compelling to me.
there's a hole in our public knowledge-base.
a big hole... from 1923 right up until today...
and the content cartel ain't gonna let us fill it.
they've got it hooked up to their cash-register,
so if we wanna play it, we're gonna have to pay.
so i'm just saying "to hell with their content".
i don't wanna read their 20th-century books,
i don't wanna watch their movies or tv shows,
i don't care about their sports or reality shows.
choke on your content, you greedy bastards,
because i'm not paying you another _nickel_.
i'm cutting you middlemen out of the equation.
the only content i'm interested in from now on
is the stuff that artists willingly share for free...
i'll pay them, voluntarily, what i think it's worth,
but i'm not interested if i have to pay in advance.
if you're trying to sell me a pig in a poke, then
don't bother. keep your pig _and_ your poke...
to that end, i'm interested in helping any artists
who wanna kickstart this "gift-exchange" mode,
who want to remove the commercial imperative
from our day-to-day existence as human beings.
that's why i'll be releasing my authoring-tools...
so today's authors can easily make their e-books.
my tools are free -- pay me only if you want --
so those new authors can make their e-books at
no cost, so they can in turn offer them cost-free
to readers -- pay the authors only if you want...
so i don't care too much about project gutenberg.
not any more, no. not now that michael is gone.
distributed proofreaders drank its own kool-aid,
so it'll soon be on its last legs and spinning away.
the whitewashers will soon burn themselves out,
completely, and disarray will surely follow after...
marcello will try to take over, and screw it all up,
either because he didn't get control, or he _did_.
and even if a white knight rides in to the rescue,
google and amazon have now seized the future,
and neither of them is gonna give up their grip...
so there's no future here. this is a great project,
with a wonderful legacy as the original pioneer...
but there's no future here. just old men like me.
***
and even old men like me are deserting the ship.
like i said, i'm more interested in "born-digital"
books these days, specifically being a mid-wife.
because the "gift-exchange" model is _more_
than merely a different way of doing business.
it's part of what will save the whole human race,
providing there is still time to accomplish that...
we've gotta get over our violence problem, and
our selfishness problem, and our greed problem.
we've gotta learn how to live with each other, and
trust each other again, and believe in ourselves...
we need leaders who can move us to a new place.
the only people who can do that are the artists.
artists who can live off the kindness of strangers.
i want to help those artists come into existence...
i want to put tools at their disposal...
***
oh, yeah, one more thing that i should add here.
this might take a little while, but it'll be worth it.
the plain-text thing? that didn't _start_out_ as
"my passion". frankly, i couldn't care less about
_formats_ of any type. as a programmer, i can
create any "format" to fill my needs at the time,
and i routinely _do_ do that, and exactly that...
i take data in, in whatever form it exists, and
convert it into something that i can work with.
so the "format" is quite meaningless to me...
as long as my app can deal with it, i'm cool...
indeed, when i first started doing e-book apps,
in the 1980s, when we were still calling them
"programs" and not "apps", my input files were
_terminal_sessions_. you'd log onto a network,
like compuserve, and "capture the session" into
a text file. so i'd input the saved text-sessions,
formatting 'em so they'd paginate on the screen.
later, when listserves became a common thing,
i would take the "digest" of a listserve as input.
the top of the digest has a list of the messages
-- a line for each, giving its subject-header --
and i would turn those lines into hot-links that
would jump a user to the appropriate message.
i also split each message to its own screen, so
each could be individually deleted or annotated.
i did desktop publishing with ventura publisher,
which saved its text in regular text-files which
it would import. learning that system intimately
taught me how you can optimize such a method.
i handled poetry chapbooks, and magazines, and
dc-10 manuals, all kinds and types of documents.
(my first o.c.r. experience was the dc-10 content,
a combination of o.c.r. and vydec conversions.)
i've pulled content out of spreadsheets, mysql,
dbase databases, sas and spss (statistics files),
and for one project even off 10-inch "floppies".
heck, the first time i saw angle-brackets was in
wordstar, for crying out loud. and wordperfect
had to be different, so it used square-brackets.
then, with sgml (again, those dc-10 manuals)
and .html, we got the angle-brackets again...
one of my early triumphs, for which i was paid
very well, was a simple program for "tagging"
the structural elements in those dc-10 manuals.
for instance, one common element is "notes".
each note has the word "note" as the header,
and the body of the note follows, indented on
both sides. so my routine searched for a line
that consisted simply of the word "note", and
tagged that as "note-header", and then also
tagged the following paragraph as "note-body".
tens of thousands of notes, tagged immediately,
across dozens of manuals, for dozens of airlines.
for people who had been tagging each note
_manually_, by clicking into its header and
then clicking the "header" button, and then
clicking into the body and clicking "body",
my simple 30-line program saved tons of time.
all of this is just to say that i'm fluent in formats.
i can sling them with the best of 'em. and i also
know that a format gives very little functionality.
(it can, however, cause you no shortage of grief.)
indeed, when i first looked at project gutenberg,
i saw its plain-text format as its largest drawback.
i was used to "text files" in the mac world, which
invisibly support bold, italics, and other "styling".
but plain-ascii files supported _none_ of that...
and markup of those styles was _erratic_ then...
it was present in _some_ books, but not _most_.
so i felt i'd need to re-work the entire library...
plus it was another era in terms of bandwidth,
so i thought i'd also need to _compress_ files,
and i worked out a very good system for that,
one that was much better than _zipping_ them.
and of course i was tying all this stuff into the
_viewer-program_ which i wrote for the books.
so the _format_ which i was originally planning
was far more elaborate than a simple text-file.
i thought i'd have to re-work each file, and
then package it up in my format. i knew that
my format would be more valuable to users,
that they would benefit from the costs i paid;
the bad part was that i'd have to do the work.
but like i said, the whitewashers simply refused
to make the simple changes that were required
to make it work (e.g., listing picture filenames).
so all those plans fell by the wayside.
while that was all falling apart, however, i did
enough research that i _began_to_understand_
that the text-file, by itself, would be sufficient.
i didn't need to inject some other information.
everything i needed was already there within...
i needed to pare away some stuff (legalese?),
and tighten some loose ends, but everything
else was pretty much lurking around inside...
and that's when i gave a low whistle to myself,
in amazement at the wisdom of michael hart,
since his insistence on that plain-text format
is what led me to do so much research on it...
if i hadn't been looking, i wouldn't have found.
i panned michael's river -- only one around! --
and discovered gold. i was completely floored.
i mean, i knew there was valuable stuff inside.
but i didn't realize it held the complete answer.
so anyway, i came here, and tried to tell people
the whole answer was sitting under their nose...
and the rest is history. recorded in the archives.
and yeah, jim is right... if i would only just lay
all of the evidence at everyone's feet, then they
_might_ believe me. (emphasis on the _might_.)
but it's too much fun to have them continue to
bet their credibility on what i have in my pocket.
i _know_ what i have in my pocket, so for me,
there's absolutely no risk in taking their bets...
because as long as they're willing to throw more
money in the pot, i don't need to show my hand.
> How long do you feel sorry
> for the stupid human nature?
the human race is _not_ stupid. not by a long shot...
quite the contrary; we are exceedingly clever animals.
but something bad happens when we institutionalize.
take government. (please!)
some of our brightest people work in the government.
smart people, with good intentions, and full resources.
but somehow, the plans that they put into motion are
almost always flawed, and quite often significantly so.
how does this happen?
how can we put lots and lots of smart people in a room,
and out comes a dumb plan? how is that even possible?
why are we smart, individually, yet dumb, collectively?
how does horse designed by committee become camel?
i wish i knew the answer to that. i wish we all knew it.
the other main problem, of course, is that there is a
complex of factors that, together, is very dangerous.
when a person is greedy, powerful, and ruthless too,
what you have is an individual who is very dangerous.
when you have a _group_ of greedy, powerful, ruthless
individuals, you have a world that's in a world of hurt...
because those people will _seize_ power, and _keep_ it,
and have no compunctions about their use of violence.
and no, i'm _not_ talking about the tin-horse dictators,
the amateurs like the shah of iran, hussein, or kadafi...
if you have to actually _use_ violence, in the public eye,
like those amateurs did, the slaves will rise against you.
i'm talking about the _professionals_, the people who
_backed_ those amateurs, the ones with so much power
that they can wield it without many of us even noticing.
heck, if you're really good at it, like those koch boys,
you can spread around a little bit of your big fortune
such that the slaves rise up against your adversaries.
(or at least you create the impression that they are.)
i read a blog once that said marx talked about this...
but far as i know, he didn't even know the koch boys.
so, you know, you can't trust everything on the blogs.
but yeah, the main problem goes back to _violence_.
the men who were willing to use it got their way, and
they built institutions which formalized their power.
(they also threw in a dash of religion to boot, which
-- per the same blog -- marx _also_ talked about...
was there anything this marx guy _didn't_ discuss?)
(that reminds me, did ya see "survivor" last week?
wasn't that a blast to see "coach" praying that they
would "find the idol", when it's right in his pocket?
talk about ensuring your prayer will be answered!)
anyway... the violence guys formalized institutions
-- the whole schmear, governments, economy --
and then convinced themselves they all _deserved_
to get special treatment, and so they set up a world
that would _deliver_ that special treatment to them.
pretty nifty trick, eh? nice work, if you can get it...
they keep getting richer, and we keep getting poorer.
because, like, you know, it's right there in the bible...
and they couldn't put it in the bible if it wasn't true...
> What problem do you tackle first,
> so that people join you in tackling it?
the first thing i do is find my girl friday, "tackle" her,
and we start making babies... _that_ is "my passion".
gotta populate the island! :+)
-bowerbird
